The Grave of the Phoenix
by speaks
Summary: A freak accident throws the carefully balanced scale between Ladybug, Chat Noir, Marinette, and Adrien into a dangerous slant, and once it starts tipping it just won't stop. The two must navigate through chaos to find equilibrium before it's too late. Yin and yang, life and death, creation and destruction-and somewhere in the middle, maybe, just maybe, they might find peace.
1. Electricity

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 **The Grave of the Phoenix**

(by Speaks)

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 **[** **Electricity]**

 _Ohm's Law:_

For many conductors of electricity, the electric current which flows through them is **directly proportional to the voltage applied**.

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 _Win. Fist bump. Warning beep._

 _Wave goodbye. Run away. Change back._

 _Life goes on._

That was how things usually went for Ladybug and Chat Noir when the city of Paris found itself neck deep in hot water. However, today the dynamic duo got hung up on _fist bump._

It had been a stellar day. Marinette's blood was positively humming in her veins and everything else in the bustling market square dimmed when she caught her partner's eye. Their teamwork had been on point through the fight. The akuma had been purified in record time, and Marinette's miraculous barely had any mess to cleanse afterward, thanks to their in-sync rhythm during the battle. Even now that it was over she was still riding high on a tsunami of adrenaline, and found herself giggling as she skipped through the fresh layer of snow toward Chat Noir to perform their ritual fist bump. It didn't help that he started laughing too. Before they knew it, they'd been standing there for almost thirty seconds, their knuckles magnetized together by something stronger than triumph.

For a brief moment, Marinette felt like the sidewalk had dropped out from under her.

Then reality kicked back in. It dawned on her (via warning beep from her earrings) that the fist bump part of their celebration may have gone on a bit too long, and she retracted her arm like a spent slingshot, her carefree laugh catching in her throat. _Whoops. My bad._ But Chat just stayed where he was, arm hanging in the air on invisible strings, a devilish smile stretched across his face and a warm blush spreading out from under his mask onto his cheeks.

Marinette quailed under her partner's unabashed gaze. "I have to go," she reminded him. She only had two minutes left before her powers shorted out.

He finally let his arm fall, then whipped his baton out until it was in a suitable position for him to lean toward her with wistful abandon. "Someday," he purred, "instead of running away from each other, we'll be running away together."

An embarrassed grimace lit across her face. _Chat Noir, you can't just say stuff like that! Warn a girl…_ Somehow she managed to work her embarrassment into a confident smirk. "If you say so, Chaton."

With that, she left him.

"I need some coffee," she groaned to Tikki about five minutes later, hugging her winter coat tightly to her chest and pressing her chin down into her woolen scarf to block out the cold.

Her tiniest friend laughed from inside the handmade purse at her side. "Coffee? You seemed so energetic before the akuma struck. What happened?"

"Chat happened."

She could hear Tikki humming to herself as she pushed across the street toward a quiet café, _La Tasse sans Fond_ , weaving in between two bicyclists that left black streaks behind them through the thin, unpacked snow. "Did he do something wrong?"

Marinette sighed, pausing with one hand on the fogged door. The last glimmer of sunset painted the glass pink, and in the faint light she could see uncertainty written plain on her face. "No," she admitted. "He's just so… sincere. It's hard to fight off his advances when he's the smoothest talker this side of the Atlantic."

"Marinette, you're not being fair to him. You _know_ he would stop cold if you ever so much as hinted that it was making you uncomfortable."

"I know."

A bell tinkled overhead as she entered the warmth of the shop. On a round wooden table next to the door she dropped her bag, lingering with her hands on the back of cushioned chair. Tikki was right. Chat may be an insatiable flirt, but under all that glamour was a heart of gold, and he cared about her deeply. If she ever sat him down and asked him to quit it, she knew he would. So that left her with nothing but her own personal problems to deal with, then. First and foremost being: _Why haven't I ever asked him to stop?_

Second being: _I guess I don't necessarily_ want _him to stop._

Third being: _What the hell does that mean?_

Caught up in her own musings and still lightheaded from the rush of battle, Marinette did something utterly thoughtlessㅡsomething she hadn't done since before her days as Ladybug. She forgot her purse. She left the prized, handsewn, flower-embroidered bag on the table by the door when she went to order a cup of coffee big enough to clear her head, and didn't see the stranger hasten past her toward the door and snatch it up on his way out. It's absence went unnoticed until she tried to pay and felt a glaring void at her side where the purse should have been. Where _Tikki_ should have been. Marinette wheeled around, but by then it was too late.

Bursting out of the shop right as the streetlamp outside flicked on, she cupped her hands and shouted in vain. "Tikki!" Again and again she called out for her kwami, but all she got in return was the confused barista popping her head outside to ask Marinette to stop screaming before closing the door once more. There was no use screaming anyway; the street was empty of pedestrians. Mindless of the wet snow, Marinette sunk to her knees, feeling small and alone under the gradient navy sky. The thief was gone, and so was Tikki.

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Nearby, Adrien vaulted from rooftop to rooftop, keen on squeezing every last bit out of the transformation before it ran out. As soon as it faded, Plagg would be on the warpath for food. He always was. It was best to be within reach of it when the insatiable kwami came flying out.

On a fire escape landing on the side of a three-story law firm, Adrien pressed himself into the gathering shadows. There was someone rustling in the alley below, too close for comfort. But he was out of time. The transformative green light flashed across his body, leaving Adrien Agreste where Chat Noir had so recently stood. He pressed a finger to his lips in the universal gesture for _shush_ as Plagg whirred to life from his ring, pointing out the shadowy figure twenty-some feet below. Plagg zipped into his open jacket without a word. The man in the alley looked up at the sudden flash of light, but didn't seem to see anything and soon went back to his rustling.

Narrowing his eyes, Adrien began a noiseless descent down the grated stairs. There was something suspicious about the way the man was hunched over, digging through a hidden object while skittishly scanning the abandoned alleyway. At the end of the fire escape, still ten feet from the ground, Adrien crouched by the raised ladder. Then he saw it: a dainty black strap. A purse! He bared his teeth. The guy was a rotten thief!

Without thinking he fished his phone out to bathe the exposed thief in a spotlight, courtesy of a high-tech camera flash. "Whatcha doin' there, buddy?"

The man jumped violently and dropped the purse. He looked up right as Adrien dropped down into the alley with a spectacular thud that echoed up the brick walls. Pleased to have rattled him, Adrien glanced down to the discarded purseㅡonly to have his heart leap into his throat.

Next to the bag on the grimy snow-laced cobblestone was a red kwami, its head decorated with a singular black dot.

The word _kwami_ came to mind unbidden, and once he thought it there was no going back. He had to get it. Totally forgetting the discarded handbag, he lunged for it on instinct, at the same time the thief lunged for the bag. The two met eyes for a brief instant. The man wore a ragged hoodie and hair in a long tangled ponytail, and his eyes were on fire, like those of a caged animal. Adrien's lip curled as he pulled the rescued creature protectively to his chest, already convinced of what he had found and ready to scrap for it with his bare hands.

But he didn't have to. The thief came to himself then and scrambled backwards with the purse before turning tail and sprinting away. His padding footsteps echoed between the buildings until he turned and vanished down a perpendicular backroad.

Adrien had already refocused his attention by the time the footsteps grew faint. He cradled the red fairylike animal close to his face, hardly daring to believe that his instinct had been right. Could it really be?

Never in his life had he rushed home so quickly.

The entrance hall was dark and silent when he clicked the solid oak doors shut behind him, sealing off the brief flurry of snow that followed in at his ankles. Adrien had long since made a secret pact with The Gorilla to keep his sneaking on the down-low. Last spring he'd caught the stoic bodyguard and his father's softspoken assistant Nathalie (of all people) kissing in one of the studies upstairs. The deal was that if The Gorilla kept Adrien's secrets, then Adrien would in turn keep his. It felt wrong to take advantage of them with that kind of leverage, but... not quite wrong enough not to.

Nowadays he hardly saw the bodyguard that was supposedly still attached to his hip (according to the continuing paychecks that Adrien regularly checked up on). Sometimes he wondered what went in the fabricated reports the man turned into Gabriel Agreste regarding his son. He could just see today's:

 _05 December 2016_

 _Monday_

 _Sir, your well-behaved son was totally, definitely at private tutoring today, and totally not owning it against Hawkmoth's latest attempt at miraculous thievery with the Lovely Lady Luck._

Haha. (He'd always had a niggling suspicion that his bodyguard suspected him of being Chat Noir. There was no way Adrien could ask him, so he'd probably never know for sure.)

The upside to this bodyguard-free arrangement was that Adrien was slightly freer to perform his heroic duties, without the constant need to dodge his father's minions. The downside was that his private life was lonelier than it had ever been. During the day the expansive Agreste mansion buzzed with energy as his father's various conspirators moved to and fro on business, and Adrien could at least pretend then, surrounded by faces, that the house felt warm and alive. But once the night fell and all those associates were gone, the building became a skeleton.

Footsteps echoed off the tile up to the vaulted ceiling, tinkling every crystal on every chandelier as he trudged through the empty, grey house toward his bedroom on the third floor. Now he didn't even have Nathalie here to greet him, like the old days. He never thought he'd miss her, but as it turned out, the thing he regretted most about this secret leave-me-alone deal was losing his friendly rapport with her. She'd been hurt by his veiled use of blackmail, and only ever spoke to him now about business, avoiding him whenever possible. The void she left in his already lacking home life was glaring.

It was unavoidable. Shaking them off his tail was an absolute necessity for his success as Chat. But that didn't mean he didn't feel insanely guilty about the way he accomplished it, and didn't mean he didn't miss them. The sad truth was: those two had been the closest thing to family that Adrien had left.

And he'd pushed them away.

When he passed his father's study he heard him within, speaking animatedly to someone (probably on the phone), and went to push the door open and say hello. But he suddenly remembered the kwami in his hands and kept on down the corridor. His father probably wouldn't have acknowledged him anyway. When Gabriel was working, his son didn't exist.

But he'd only gotten twenty steps past the study when he pulled an abrupt about-face, stowing the red kwami in his pocket. He was eighteen years old now and damned if he was going to be scared of that man for his entire lifeㅡ _twice_ damned if he was going to be alone for his entire life either.

When Adrien eased the door open, his father stopped talking mid-sentence and straightened, wheeling around to face him as he adjusted his suit jacket. It was 9pm already, but Adrien couldn't remember the last time he'd seen him in pajamas. The thought was laughable.

The first thing he noticed was that his father was not, in fact, on the phone. "Who were you talking to?" Adrien heard himself ask before he could filter his brain-to-mouth funnel. Shit, he was still in Chat mode. And he hadn't seen the man in person in five whole days, so it cost him that slip-up to step backwards into son mode.

The impoliteness went over Gabriel's head, for once, and he deigned to answer instead of brushing him off. "A client," he replied sharply. "On the phone. I'm very busy, Adrien, can I help you?"

"Oh." The only light in the study came from the crackling log in the fireplace, and Adrien caught sight of his cell phone on his desk, it's silver rim reflecting a lick of fire from across the room. The screen was dark. Weird. "I just wanted to say… goodnight." He trailed off, peering behind the open door, half-expecting to find someone hiding back there. If his father hadn't been on the phone, then who was he talking to just now?

His father pursed his lips, like the very idea of Adrien bursting in here with nothing more important to say than _goodnight_ left a sour taste in his mouth. "Ah. Alright, then. Goodnight Adrien."

Adrien lingered with his hand on the door. When he turned one-eighty and marched back towards his father's study he'd been planning on saying _I love you,_ as a rude reminder that those words existed and might be welcome once in awhile, thank-you-very-much. But he was too distracted by his father's lie to think. Besides, he had more important things to worry about right now than the weakening ties between he and his father. So he left.

As soon as he slammed his own bedroom door shut, he opened his jacket to usher Plagg out.

"You know, you _really_ shouldn't be playing the hero game in your civilian clothes," Plagg droned. "Reckless idiot... And where's my cheese? I'm tired and hungry."

"Not now," Adrien whispered, staring raptly at the thing in his hands. Since he'd picked it up off the alley floor it had remained motionless and stiff, like a child's toy. Like a doll. By when Plagg spoke he was absolutely certain he'd seen it twitch. "Is this who I think it is?" he wondered earnestly.

And Plagg finally noticed what Adrien was regarding with such tender care and caution. "What!" he shrieked. " _Tikki?_ What are you doing here? Are you alright?"

Tikki flailed, shocked to life by being directly addressed, and blinked until her eyes found Plagg, who had taken to zooming around Adrien's hands in frantic circles. "Plagg? How did you find me? I mean, meow?" She had spotted Adrien again and performed a half-hearted attempt at being a cat before giving up and playing dead once more.

"No, no," Adrien assured her, "it's okay! It's me. It's _me_ ," he emphasized, giving Ladybug's lost kwami a long slow wink. "Chat Noir!"

Tikki sprung to full attention in his hands. She screwed up her face at him. Of course she'd only seen the recent-most holder of Plagg's miraculous a few times in person, since she was usually in the earrings doing her thing by the time Chat showed up, and she certainly didn't know who he was beneath the mask. But Plagg's presence was evidence enough on its own. Tikki pressed her arms to her cheeks, suddenly lightheaded. She was grateful to be saved from that no-good thief, but… Boy, was this ever a shock!

"Adrien?" she finally managed to choke out. " _You're_ Chat Noir?"

"Huh?" Adrien was taken aback at her familiarity. "You know who I am? Does that mean Ladybug knowsㅡ"

"It means nothing!" Tikki squeaked, then pressed her hands over her mouth.

Plagg hovered over her like she'd sprouted an extra limb from her eye. "What were you doing with a thug in an alley?" he pestered.

Oh god. "Is Ladybug okay?" Adrien blurted. The sudden terrifying thought that the man had done something to his lady when he'd stolen her purse threatened to strangle him alive.

"She's fine," Tikki promised, and Adrien slumped into his desk chair in relief. "That guy stole her purse from a café! We went for coffee and then _bam_ , I was whisked away." She groaned. "I couldn't simply escape because, well, look at me!" She flew over to Adrien's desk and made herself at home among the neatly stacked comic books, pointing up at Plagg with a hint of jealousy. "I can't pass off the whole 'I'm a regular old cat' thing as easily as _some_ of us."

"Oh, wow," Adrien said to himself, watching as Tikki and Plagg interacted with a degree of domestic familiarity that made him almost jealous. It's not as if he'd never wondered after Ladybug's identity before, but the fact that her kwami was right here in front of him made it a solid certainty that somewhere in Paris was the girl he loved, maskless. Living her life. It was maddening. He felt he could almost see her face. It swam into view in his mind's eye, blurry and glowing and just out of reach. "Ladybug's kwami… Can you believe our luck?" he said to the two on his desk, interrupting a heated debate over the best way to fool strangers that have spotted you.

"This isn't lucky!" they both hissed.

Adrien's chin slipped off his hand where it had been resting dreamily. He nearly smacked it on the desk and had to hastily right himself in his chair. "Of course it is. Better me than anyone else, right? Now I can get you back to Ladybug, Tikki. No harm done."

Tikki slumped down onto the topmost issue of _The Marvelous Adventures of Ladybug and Chat Noir_. (He read them for the art. The art was absolutely killer. The writing… Let's just say he wished he could drop in and have a word with the writers about some of the weirder liberties they'd taken.)

"Except you don't know who Ladybug is, Adrien."

A dopey look came over him, and he leaned on his hands again, positively smitten by the idea that had just occurred to him. "No. But you could tell me, couldn't you?"

"I'm not _going_ to!"

Smirk effectively wiped. "How are we going to get you back to Ladybug, then?" He swiveled around in his computer chair to gesture across the bedroom toward the towering windows and the expansive view they afforded. Out in the night the city of Paris glittered with life, every color of the rainbow coming together in a kaleidoscope of urban patterns, vibrant and full and in constant motion. There was never more than a faint dusting of stars visible this deep in the city, but having a front seat view as the moon descended beyond the Seine almost made up for it. Almost. Faraway a police siren sprinkled the night, and Plagg's ears twitched in response.

"Paris is a busy city, even by night," Adrien told Tikki. "Cameras everywhere, ne-er-do-wells like the one I just rescued you from…" He hit her with a pointed look. "You can't exactly fly across the city by yourself. You'll be seen."

"I know that," she sighed. "Even if it was perfectly safe, I'm not sure I could find her house on my own from this part of the city."

Plagg laid across Adrien's keyboard with a bored expression, opening up four different programs by accident on the main monitor. "This is a real pickle," he yawned.

Adrien sighed too. Lately when he looked out his window the only thing he was able to think of was Ladybug. Where she was, what she was doing… And now he was worried that she was out there alone, robbed of her powers and scared for the safety of her kwami. Every heartstring in his chest stretched thin as he pictured the scene: the girl he loved, alone and upset outside a café downtown.

"It's times like these when I think everything would be so much easier if we knew each other's identities," he muttered, eyes glued to the distant city lights. "You really did a number on LB, Tikki. She is well and truly convinced that our identities need to stay secret."

"As _Plagg_ should have with you!" Tikki scolded, directing her ire straight at the other kwami for not doing his job with enough zazz. Plagg flinched, opening yet another window on the monitor above him. "We wouldn't tell you to keep yourselves a secret if it wasn't important," Tikki reasoned, her tone far sweeter as she addressed Adrien. "It's not as if Ladybugs and Chat Noirs have always been secret. Sometimes they find out. Sometimes on accident, sometimes on purpose, sometimes never at all. It all depends on circumstance. Sometimes there's not much danger in them knowing, so it's okay."

Adrien knew where this was going. He glanced up at the programs that Plagg had unintentionally opened with the keyboard shortcuts, and saw that the newest window was the Ladyblog. The most recent post was a picture of the two of them posing proudly after having defeated this evening's akuma. The broken screwdriver still lay on the ground between their feet, and the purified butterfly hovered between their noses in picturesque frozen flight; Alya seemed to have caught them in the extra-charged fist bump they'd shared after the fight. Adrien leaned in close to the screen, trying to read the whir of emotions on Ladybug's face. She _had_ to have felt it too. That electricity.

Plagg cleared his throat.

Right. "And… for us?" Adrien asked Tikki, closing out the blog window. "For this Lady and this Chat?"

"Lots of danger," the kwamis answered in tandem.

"Think about it, kid," Plagg launched as Adrien's forehead connected with the desk. "You've been hit by plenty a wayward arrow. Always throwing yourself in front of magical projectiles for her… It's a wonder you're not dead, really. If history repeats itselfㅡ"

("And it always does," Tikki interjected.)

"ㅡyou will be controlled by akumas again before Hawkmoth is defeated. Heck, you or Ladybug might even be akumatized yourselves before this is all over."

Surprised, Adrien rolled his head to the side to ogle his kwami. "Really? I thought it was impossible for us to get akumatized since we also hold miraculouses."

Tikki put her hands on her hips. "Is that what you told him?"

Plagg threw his hands up. "You don't understand what a worrywart this kid can be! All the moaning and self-doubtㅡsheesh, fine!" he added as Tikki grew even more cross. "It's technically possible," he admitted. "It just takes a lot more negative emotion from one of you than it would for your typical everyday citizen to allow Hawkmoth to gain control. A _lot_ more than something like losing a job or being embarrassed in front of a crush."

Placing one hand gently on Adrien's upturned cheek, Tikki blinked her wide, puppydog eyes at him. "Please don't misunderstand. We trust you implicitly, Chat Noirㅡme _and_ Ladybug. If it weren't for the danger, she would tell you who she was. I'm absolutely sure of it. But the fact is that we don't know what's going to happen. Hawkmoth is a unique villain unlike any other, in that he controls people. He gets into their minds. If he ever got into yours, you wouldn't want Ladybug's true name to be there for him to find, would you?"

"No," he admitted quietly. Even thinking about the implications of such an event made his skin crawl. "She would be in terrible danger."

"Her family would be in danger," Tikki added. "Her friends."

"Yeah… Yeah. You're right." Adrien pushed himself upright, stretching his legs out like a cat under the computer desk. "Maybe someday, though, right?" He poked Tikki's belly hopefully. "Someday when Hawkmoth is just a thing of the past?"

"Yes." Tikki nuzzled his hand. "Someday."

Folding his arms across his chest, Adrien turned his attention back to the glaring problem they all still faced. "But for now, how do I return you to Ladybug without knowing who she is?" He looked to Plagg, who shrugged at Tikki, who in turn shrugged at Adrien. "Come on," Adrien laughed. "You guys are, what, like a trillion years old?"

"Thirteen point eight billion," Tikki corrected.

"So haven't you run into this problem before?" he asked incredulously.

"Sure," Plagg droned from his keyboard bed. "Kind of. But the variables are all different."

"So many variables!" Tikki wailed.

"Alright, alright," Adrien laughed, one hand tracing his jaw thoughtfully. "I think I have an idea."

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"It's just a purse, Marinette. I know for a fact that you didn't have any money in there because I spotted you lunch earlier today." Perched at the edge of Marinette's bed, Alya patted the tangled nest of blankets as tenderly as she could manage. From somewhere inside came a strangled sob followed by more unintelligible babbling. "What?"

The ball of blankets fidgeted, and Marinette groaned, then groaned some more before speaking up more clearly. "It's not just a purse," she wailed.

Alya frowned. She'd never seen Marinette this distraught before, and it was sorta freaking her out. "I know," she soothed. "You made it yourself. I'm really sorry."

"No, no, no," she cried, "it's what was _in_ the purse!"

"What was in it, Mari? I'll help you replace it."

"No, it's myㅡa priceless heirloom," she hiccupped tearily. "Irreplaceable."

"Really?" Alya was caught off guard by that. She couldn't remember ever having seen Marinette with anything like that before. She was about to inquire further when her phone buzzed in her pocket. Leaving one hand on what she was pretty sure was Marinette's head, Alya fished out her cell to find that it was Nino who had texted her.

 **Bubbles:** _better tune into the ch4 news ASAP_

Alya began composing a reply that summed up Marinette's distress and let Nino know she was busy, but was interrupted by a quick succession of texts before she'd even completed the message.

 **Bubbles:** _LIKE NOW ALYA!_

 **Bubbles:** _CHAT NOIR 911_

 **Bubbles:** _(ambulance_emoji_png)_

Oh man, something awesome must be going on for Nino to alert her like this. "Sorry babygirl, gotta check something for the blog." Marinette made no complaint as she flitted across the room and woke her friend's computer to bring up the Channel Four News homepage.

The honey-rich voice of a news reporter slashed through Marinette's self-enforced prison of eternal guilt and depression. "We'll be playing the following clip a couple more times throughout the night, in hopes that the message reaches Ladybug. Roll tape, please." That caught her attention. And then when the clip rolled and Chat spoke, Marinette launched upright so fast she nearly fell straight out of bed.

"Hey Ladybug, it's me, your one and only." The pre-recorded video showed Chat standing in front of a blank white wall, where he posed briefly and vainly for the camera, as if in verification that yes, he was definitely Chat Noir. Then he leaned in close to the camera so that only his face from the nose up fit on-screen, donning serious, wide eyes. "I found something of yours. Something you lost. Please meet me on the steps of the Notre Dame tomorrow at 10pm so I can return it to you." He offered the camera a reassuring smile that struck Marinette hard. It was meant for her, and her alone. _Don't worry,_ he was saying, _I got you._ "Till then, my lady."

The clip ended and the anchors in the newsroom went back to their speculation. "I wonder what Ladybug lost?" the man on the right wondered.

"I wonder why Chat Noir had to come on the news to reach her," his charming co-host expanded. "This is certainly new. Could it be the great and powerful Ladybug has lost her miraculous?"

"Let's not assume the worst," the man hastened to assure the audience. "But there's obviously something keeping her out of contact with her cat. Wonder what it could be? In other news…"

At that transition Alya muted the newscast so she could go berserk. "Wow, this is crazy! I gotta get this on my blog to help spread it." The sound of hasty tapping at the keyboard touched Marinette's ears, but she was beyond reach of Alya's words. "Poor Ladybug, I wonder what she lost? Chat Noir's a real sweetheart, going out of his way like this… Woah, Mari, what's wrong?"

On the bed with her body still half tangled in the blankets, Marinette truly looked like she had seen a ghost. Her pupils dilated and her heart raced in her ears and her hands squeezed the edge of her blanket so hard that her knuckles turned white. Chat Noir found Tikki. _Chat Noir found Tikki._ She could just kiss him! But then again… was he a _moron?_ Now everyone and their uncle's uncles were going to show up at this proposed meeting place in an effort to spot them, so there was no way in heck she was gonna be able to slip in unseen and snag Tikki back. He really couldn't think of anything better than this? Oh, she could just smack him.

"Hello?" Alya waved her hand in front of Mari's face, snapping her back to reality. "Cat got your tongue?" she giggled.

 _Excusez-moi?_ Marinette narrowed her eyes at Alya like the girl had just stabbed her with a rusty fork. Not Alya too with the damn feline puns... "No," she replied, snapping out of her pun-induced rage. "I'm just curious, that's all."

"Great," Alya trilled. "Me too! This will help take your mind off the whole purse thing."

"What do you mean?"

"Duh, we are going to be there at the Notre Dame tomorrow! I wanna see Chat Noir sweep Ladybug off her feet!"

Marinette grumbled something about Ladybug sweeping the floor with Chat Noir instead.

In the middle of gleefully bouncing, Alya shot back, "What was that?"

"Nothing!"

This was going to be a helluva week.

* * *

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 **Author's notes:**

A few important things! First, this is a big story I'm setting out to write, with several major story arcs, so you can expect a minimum of 12 chapters.

Second, I've decided to minimize the amount of French in this story, since I don't speak it and don't care to butcher it and because simply adding French words to a story doesn't _make it_ more French. (Side-eyeing a couple of fics...) I'll be compensating this with actual research about Paris and France in general, to make it all more realistic. The things that will remain French are the things that don't translate without losing something; things like proper nouns (i.e. streets and names and places, etc) and linguistic expressions that just sound better in French (i.e. _excusez-moi_ ).

 _*La Tasse sans Fond_ (the café Mari goes to in this chapter) translates to The Bottomless Mug.

Third, I'm going to do a quick comparison of the French and American public school systems, since a great many readers hail from the US. In France, 'high school' is called _lycée_ and lasts three years, instead of four. The three grade levels are _seconde_ , _première_ , and _terminale_ ; these are equivalent to the American sophomore (10th), junior (11th), and senior (12th) years of high school.

 **From my understanding, the first season of the show canonically takes place during their _seconde_ year of school. This story then takes place two years post season one, during their _terminale_ year. **

Fourth, I know the title is kinda heavy for the stuff that's happened so far. Let's just say that this chapter was like the part of a roller coaster where the attendant comes by and clicks down your restraints.

Prepare for liftoff...


	2. Inertia

**[Inertia]**

 _Newton's first law of motion:_

Sometimes referred to as the law of inertia. An object at rest stays and rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same directionㅡ **unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.**

* * *

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Never in his life had Adrien been so restless at his school desk. More than once Nino reached over to slap his pencil flat on the tabletop, whispering for him to cut out the incessant drumbeat he had been tapping since sitting down that morning. It wasn't his fault! How was he supposed to concentrate when he knew he would be seeing Ladybug later? He would be meeting her and she wouldn't be wearing her mask and he would have to control himself and not look and… ugh! He buried his head in his hands as the looming prospect of the 10pm meetup overwhelmed him once again, earning another confused glance from Nino.

Mme. Janvier may as well have been speaking Russian considering the amount of the lesson he was able to soak in. At the end of her lecture when she allowed everyone to pack up for the next period, he looked down at his notes and saw only nonsense, interspersed with doodles of cats and ladybugs.

.

.

All day Tikki searched in vain for an opportunity to slip from Adrien's bag to Marinette's. Plagg lay back on Adrien's bunched up scarf, as amused by Tikki's determined station at the zipper as he was by the fact that Adrien's precious Ladybug was apparently within arm's reach of him during school hours. That tickled him to death.

"Gotta hand it to Fu," Plagg pointed out as Tikki shied away from the zipper yet again, chickening out on making a break for it as a student wandered up the aisle. "He really knows how to pick 'em."

"You know Fu doesn't pick them," Tikki reminded him. "He just finds them." She huffed, giving up for now and settling into the folds of the scarf with Plagg. "But _honestly_. This is the most dramatic irony we've had in ages. It's going to be so difficult to keep this from Marinette when I return to her. I hope this plan of Adrien's works, Plagg, because I hate leaving her defenseless like this."

Burrowing himself a little bit deeper into the glacier blue cashmere, Plagg closed his eyes. "Relax. Take a cat nap with me. It'll work."

"I don't know," she fretted, manually prying open one of Plagg's eyes. "Are you sure Adrien won't peek when she shows up?"

Plagg cackled at that. "Oh yeah, I'm sure. You really got him good yesterday, Tikki. You don't know him like I doㅡyou struck the fear in that poor sap's heart with that speech of yours. You realize he's in _love_ with her, right? Like with the swooning and pining and poetry and everything. He wouldn't dream of putting his feelings above her safety. We are golden."

"Poor Adrien," Tikki pouted. From what she'd seen of him in person, he was all and more of the kind-hearted saint that Marinette had made him out to be. "This really isn't fair to them. You know, the only reason Marinette spurns Chat is because she's in love with _civilian_ Adrien already!"

If that shocked Plagg he showed no sign. "Boo hoo. Other cats and bugs have had it worse."

"Sure, there have been greater hardships for previous holders, but _never_ such an ironic romantic tragedy as this. You're so callous," she shot at him when he feigned a snore. "Don't you want Adrien to be happy?"

"Of course I do!" Plagg grumbled. "But you _know_ how it goes, Tikki. Time and again, whenever we interfere it never helps. So we have to let all these complications run their course on their own. Let them chart their own path to equilibrium. The two of them are as complementary as you and I are, and the balance between them as delicate. We can't interrupt their journey (no matter how asinine it is) or the scales might tip off balance for good. They have to find it themselves, Tik. It's the only way."

In the dark of Adrien's bag, Tikki found herself sighing and slipping in closer, until she was close enough to press her head up against the god of destruction; her polar opposite in every way and yet her dearest, truest friend. "Oh, Plagg."

"What?" If kwamis could blush Plagg would have been glowing.

"I almost wish I didn't have to go back. I miss you so much when you're away." She felt Plagg lean in, ever so slightly, and she pulled the edges of the scarf around their shoulders to cocoon them together in the world's softest cashmere blanket. "You know that," she cooed, "don't you, chaton?"

A beat of warm silence, and then: "Yeah," he purred back. "I miss you too, bugaboo."

.

.

By the end of the school day Adrien's nerves were in absolute tatters. Along with the jitters about meeting up with civilian Ladybug that evening, he'd become dangerously enamored with the idea of his lady beneath the mask turning out to be someone he knew. After all, Tikki had been on a first name basis with him, and had called it out only to immediately retract it. As if by knowing it she had dropped a precious clue.

A precious, tantalizing clue.

It could only mean one thing really, and that was that at some point, past or present, Adrien had made direct contact with the girl who was Ladybug. Maybe she worked with his father, or was a daughter of colleague. Maybe she went to school with him. Maybe she had simply met him on the street one day. Whatever the truth may be, it made him all the more desperate to know who she was. Being trapped in the dark this way had become nothing short of torture.

Only when his fellow students started filing past him toward the door did Adrien realize the school day had ended. As he started to pack up his things, Nino craned around in his chair to strike up a conversation with his long-time off-and-on sweetheart, Alya.

"By the way, thanks for the heads up yesterday, babe," Alya said. She tapped the bill of his cap with her phone affectionately.

"What do you think Ladybug lost?" he wondered.

"Not her miraculous?" Alya wondered with an edge to her voice. "You don't think?"

Adrien swiveled around to butt into the conversation. "I doubt it," he told Alya with confidence. "Not Ladybug. She's too responsible to part with her miraculous, willingly or accidentally."

"But I'm sure it's something important," Marinette added wistfully. "Uh, whatever it is."

Adrien nodded and she turned away, flushing like mad. "I'm sure. You think Ladybug saw the video?"

Nino laughed. "That video has gone absolutely viral; there's no way she hasn't seen it unless she lives under a rock. So what do you say?" He leaned on Alya's desk, wiggling his eyebrows up at her. "You guys wanna check it out?"

"Uh… what do you mean?" Adrien shifted his gaze from Nino to Alya, something about their gleeful expressions not quite clicking in his head.

"Duh!" Alya slapped both hands on the tabletop. "Everyone's going! We wanna see what Chat Noir's gonna give her!"

Adrien went white, and deep in his backpack Tikki and Plagg groaned in unison. Of course everyone wanted to know what precious possession of Ladybug's Chat Noir had found. Why hadn't he seen that coming? "Everyone's going, huh?" He tugged at his collar. How could he have been so naïve? (Marinette, meanwhile, was head-desking at lightspeed.) "Sorry," he weaseled, "can't make it. Piano recital."

"Boo," Alya pouted, and gave him two thumbs down, while Nino chimed in with a matching, "Laaame."

"Sorry guys," he shrugged. "You know how it is." _No,_ he told himself, _they don't know even half of the elaborate mess you're drowning in._

"But you two are coming, right?" Nino directed at the girls, and for the first time Adrien noticed how dejected Marinette was acting. Her cheek was pressed flat on her desk and she was staring straight out the window. Maybe they'd never grown too close (and maybe that was definitely his fault) but she was such a gentle, pure person that he felt a sharp tug in his heart when he caught sight of her tortured expression. Put simply, he cared about her. So he had to wonder what was wrong.

"Of course we are," Alya answered. "Wouldn't miss it for the world. Right, Marinette?"

"Right," Marinette answered without moving. "Uh…" She had noticed Adrien staring, and he flushed when she blinked down at him shyly. "Good luck tonight, Adrien."

Yeah, he would need all the luck in the world to pull off this crazy… wait, what? His eyes widened in panic. Marinette knew? She knew he was Chat and he'd be seeing Ladybug without her mask and he'd have to control himself and not look? She was so shrewd, how did she figureㅡ? Wait. No, wait. "Good luck with what?" he managed to choke out.

Marinette turned a deep shade of puce at Adrien's reaction, and he could see her second guessing her words. The more nervous she grew, the less nervous he became. "With your recital?" she squeaked.

Phew. She didn't know anything. She was just being Marinette (aka, incredibly nice, and damn he felt bad about lying when she wished him luck with such sincerity).

The blood rushed back into Adrien's head, making him dizzy. Why did he assume that? He must really be nervous. "Ha, of course. Thanks, Marinette, that's sweet of you. Oh _no_ , I'm late for Mandarin!"

This was unfortunately true, and he leapt up out of his seat and bounded toward the door, dragging his bag along behind him, heart still pounding a million miles an hour. His friends watched him go with an air of confusion, wondering what on earth had gotten into him.

Out in the nearly empty hallway, Adrien gripped his bag tightly to his chest as he hustled toward the front doors. "This is a disaster," he whispered through clenched teeth.

"You still have to go," Tikki whispered back through the bag. "If she shows up and you don't, she might think something bad has happened to you, or to me. I know her. She'll panic."

"But how am I gonna know which one is Ladybug when everyone in Paris shows up?"

He wrinkled his nose at the sound of Plagg's uncontrollable laughter. "You won't! This is hilarious."

After a brief spout of rustling, Plagg fell silent with an _ow_. "What Plagg means," Tikki whispered again, "is that you won't. But, as long as you make an appearance, Ladybug will know you're trying. I'm sure she's worried sick about me, just like I am about her. We'll just have to try again with another plan after tonight. I was uncertain about the merit of this one anyway."

"Hey," Adrien protested weakly as he emerged out into the brilliant azure afternoon. "Not cool, Tikki…"

.

.

"Showtime!" Alya triumphed, unplugging her fully charged phone from Marinette's computer to hold it aloft like an Olympic medal. Marinette followed her and Nino down the stairs with less than a quarter of their combined excitement.

"Have fun, you three!" Sabine called from the somewhere out of sight in the bakery kitchen.

"And remember, home by midnight!" Tom shouted after them from the front door as they skipped down the street.

Marinette trailed behind Nino and Alya on the sidewalk, letting them occupy themselves with speculation and small talk while her mind wandered. She watched as the barest tip of the moon began to peek out from behind a distant building, below Venus where it hung near the horizon. She'd had a lot to think about over the last twenty-four hours, and there were a lot of regrets swimming around at the bottom of her stomach. If she had just given into Chat's wishes a long time ago and confessed her identity then none of this would be happening. Tikki could be in her pocket right now, if only Chat _knew_ that she was Marinette. He could have paid her a late night visit last night to return her lost kwami.

She blushed at the very thought. _Okay, scratch that maybe._

Just as easily, he could have called her up to meet. They could have met on a street corner, in a library, at her front door… Anything was possible if they were both in civilian clothes, and had each other on speed dial.

Not for the first time, Marinette found herself wondering after Chat Noir's identity. Sure she'd always been the one to insist upon secrecy, but it didn't mean she'd never wondered. She wondered all the time! And the fact that she knew he was wondering about her at this very moment only served to fuel her curiosity. After all, would it really be so bad to know? Maybe Tikki had exaggerated the danger. At this moment, the possibility of sharing their secret lives was only giving her excitement and hope. Maybe it was time to give up the ghost.

When they arrived it was just after ten, and the snowy square was filled with people. Cameras flashed and voices turned into fog in the air and halfway up the front face of the historic cathedral, Marinette saw a dark figure huddled in the silver shadows, stark in contrast. A thrill of longing went through her. Tikki was _right there._

.

.

Far above, Adrien stood between two wide pillars, propping himself up forlornly on his baton. "How long do I have to stay, do you think?" he asked the red kwami that was nestled on his shoulder, mostly rhetorically. He pressed the cold end of the baton into his forehead. "Ladybug must think I'm such an idiot, broadcasting the meeting spot on public television like that."

Tikki only nudged herself further into his shoulder, rubbing her cheek along his jaw. "How else were you supposed to get her the message?" she reasoned. "Stop beating yourself up, Adrien."

.

.

Down on the ground, Marinette once again let herself fall behind Nino and Alya. "You guys go in for the close-up," she told them. "I'll hang back for the wide shot, in case things get really good." She held up her own phone.

Nino threw one arm over Alya's shoulders and shot Marinette a delighted thumbs up. "Thinking like a true director. Awesome, Mar!"

Alya shrugged off Nino's arm with an amused smirk. "Come on, Spielberg, we gotta push to the front before too many people crowd the steps."

Marinette watched her friends disappear into the crowd with a pout slowly dominating her face. What the heck was she supposed to do? After some brief and turbulous deliberation, she turned tail and left the crowded square. She was going to have to lure Chat away from the Notre Dame if she even wanted a chance at speaking with him. So with a new gleam of determination in her eye, she crossed the _Rue de Cloitre de Notre Dame_ , heading for the fire escape on the building across the road to the north, away from the neighboring Seins. By 10:20 she was three stories up the building across the way, about eye level with Chat. She could still see his dark figure lurking in the shadows on the ornate Cathedral exterior. Now to get his attention.

Pulling her phone back out of her pocket, she grinned to herself. She _had_ promised Alya she would use it…

.

.

By 10:30, Chat finally noticed someone flashing a light at him across the road. Seeing the obvious signal for his attention, and still not eager to delve into the growing crowd below, he gladly deposited Tikki onto the ledge to wait for him and slipped around the side of the Notre Dame unseen before pole-vaulting across the street. Sure, it was probably just a fan, but anything was better than agonizing over LB.

"Oh," he breathed as he landed deftly on the fire escape in front of the girl who had signalled him. "Marinette! H-hey. Hi."

He sheathed his baton at his lower back, anxiety suddenly gripping him in waves. Even though she'd mentioned she would be here during class, he honestly wasn't expecting to see or speak to her tonight, here, _alone_ , and after his little slip-up in class earlier, he was more than a little nervous to chat with her as, uh… Chat. What could she possibly want?

"So you remember me, huh?" Marinette stowed her phone and leaned into the railing, eyeing him with a twinkle of suspicion. She bit her lip, hiding a giggle unsuccessfully. "You save so many people every day. I must be a real gem for you to remember my name."

Adrien awarded her shrewdness with a cool, haphazard smirk, but inside he was sweating bullets. _Idiot, you're making it so obvious that you know her! Play it cool, Adrien, god!_

"A knight always remembers a princess," he scoffed, poorly attempting to dial back on the familiarity. In the process he said it more genuinely than should have been possible, garnering an eye roll from Marinette in response. "So what are you doing up here, anyway?"

"Funny. I was gonna ask the same thing." Marinette walked two of her fingers along the railing, eyes on the crowd across the street. "You really think Ladybug's gonna show up here with a thousand people snapping pictures right below? Doesn't seem like her style."

Following her gaze, Chat sighed heavily. "No. She's not coming. I… shouldn't have posted that publicly. The thing is, Ladybug and I are out of contact. I urgently need to give her something but I've no clue how to find her, and I don't know how to set up a private meeting without being able to reach her."

"You know what you need," Marinette said as carefully and casually as possible, "is a place only the two of you would know."

"Huh?"

"You know," she pressed, "like a secret place. Post a message again, this time with a place only Ladybug would be able to find. That's how you get your secret meeting."

"Marinette!" She jumped as he took her face in his hands, smushing up her cheeks with loud, unbridled affection. "Why didn't I think of that? You're a _genius!"_

"I know," she blushed, barely intelligible through the cheek smushing.

"You're friends with AlyaㅡI mean, the girl who runs the Ladyblogㅡright?"

It was difficult to nod with him holding her face like that, but she managed it, somehow. "Yesh. She'sh my main lady."

Chat beamed down at her, vibrating in place with rekindled excitement. "Think you could give her a message for _my_ main lady? The Ladyblog has a smaller audience than the news, so there's less a chance for the location to leak. Plus I know that LB checks it for akuma reports. Just have Alya post a message from Chat Noir, asking Ladybug to meet me on the roof of the tallest building on the street where we met, same time tomorrow. Could you do that for me?"

Again, Marinette struggled to nod through the intense bout of cheek-smushing that had yet to subside.

"Great!" he purred, and threw his arms around her shoulders, pulling her in close for a smothering hug. "Thank you so much, you have no idea how much you just helped me."

Marinette couldn't respond. She was too busy fighting a desperate internal battle, because at that moment every fiber of her being was screaming _just bite the bullet and tell him already! You're so close! Tikki is probably in his pocket right now, inches from you! You're making this more difficult than it has to be!_ After a moment of this debate her cowardice gained the upperhand. She hugged him back, pressing her face to his chest so as not to tempt herself any further into saying anything she might regret. But in the end curiosity won out. She pulled back, just a bit, unable to look up into his eyes, instead staring out past the Notre Dame to the glittering black surface of the Seine.

"Chat, why _do_ you remember me?"

It was a valid question. Regular girl Marinette Dupain-Cheng and hero boy Chat Noir had only met on a handful of occasions. Thrice during akuma attacks, and once on a hushed snowy night. She'd been sipping hot cocoa out on her balcony when he passed by, then came back, dropping deftly and soundlessly into the fresh snow beside her. They had shared the rest of her cup in amiable silence. Marinette had then spent the rest of the winter break wondering why Chat had seemed so comfortable on her private terrace, between her and her withered plants; like he'd been there before, or had always planned to come, or perhaps had always belonged.

But that night was a year ago already. There were other civilian girls that he'd saved ten times more frequently, and she was truly surprised that he remembered her with such clarity that he would instantly recognize her, even in the dark. It made her wonder.

On Adrien's part, her question struck him dumb. _Why do you remember me?_ He'd never expected shy, soft-spoken Marinette to come right out and air the obvious mystery like that, and now what was he supposed to say? _Because we're friends irl._ He couldn't tell her that! So he opted for partial honesty. Half-truth.

"Because, princess. You just stand out."

Marinette flushed, suddenly aware that they were still standing with their arms wrapped around each other, the impromptu hug having evolved into something else entirely. Something dangerous. She tore her eyes from the glassy black river and was surprised to see how tense he had grown. He too was surprised by her sudden nerves, and in that moment, as they met each others' eyes, they had to ask themselves.

 _Does he know who I am?_

 _Does she know who I am?_

After a long, tense moment, they each privately concluded _no_.

The other couldn't possibly know (the alternative was too alarming to entertain) and they made their bashful excuses as they retreated from the embrace. But neither of them could help the belated question that sprung up later that night, Marinette cuddled on her chaise and Adrien poised beneath his window. They hadn't thought about it at the time, so concerned were they both that the other had begun to catch on. But now that they were alone it was all they could think.

Marinette rolled onto her back on the chaise, biting her tongue as she instinctively began to ask Tikki for advice. Tikki was still gone. Safe, but gone.

With Chat Noir.

 _If he doesn't suspect I'm Ladybug, what the heck was that intimate hug about?_ Hugging him wasn't wasn't weird for her because she _knew_ Chat on that level. They were partners and friends and so much more than that, and she was used to his affection by now. But to Chat she should have been just another citizen. Marinette groaned into her pillow, thinking of the glint of recognition that always flashed in his eyes when Chat saw her as a civilian, before dulling into the usual. What did it _mean?_

Back at home, Adrien leaned his forehead on the middlemost pane of glass that separated his bedroom from the rest of Paris. Tikki and Plagg tried to rouse him from his thoughts but he only shook his head, his lips pressing into a taut line. Soon Plagg led Tikki away to some other nook or cranny, explaining that when Adrien got in one of his moods there was just no getting through. Better to wait it out.

The glass was like ice on his forehead and it helped him focus on the fresh curiosity he had unearthed. As much as it flustered him to admit it, Adrien knew that Marinette liked him, and had known it for a long time.

Liked _Adrien_ , not… not Chat!

Huffing loudly, he rapped his head a few times on the glass, only stopping when Tikki grew concerned. He was just so surprised! If she didn't suspect that Chat was Adrien, then what was with that intense, loaded look they had shared when he hugged her?

* * *

.

.

 **Author's notes:**

Please note that the use of names (Adrien, Chat, Marinette, and Ladybug) in this fic is important and I've put a lot of thought into which is used where. Because his story is written in the third person omniscient, you're going to see the internal thoughts of many characters throughout. I've taken to using their names to help distinguish the current focus of narration, which tends to switch back and forth when they are sharing scenes together. Take, for instance, the above scene with Mari and Chat. Mari thinks of him as Chat, but Adrien just thinks of himself as Adrien. So whenever you see me call him Adrien when he's currently Chat, that's because you're seeing Adrien's perspective at that moment. If you see me call him Chat when he's dressed as Chat, you're seeing him from Marinette's perspective.

Same thing goes for scenes with Lady and Chat. If I invoke the name Marinette it's because these are Mari's thoughts, and vice versa with Adrien. If I invoke the name Ladybug, that's because these are Adrien's thoughts.

This will help, later on, when the relationship between the four corners of the love square gets muddled and confusing. Most scenes that include both of them will switch back and forth like this, so it was important to me to develop a system early on before it got chaotic. Just expect this and you won't be caught off guard by it.


	3. Gravity

**[Gravity]**

 _Newton's law of universal gravitation:_

A particle attracts every other particle in the universe; it does so with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to **the square of the distance between them.**

* * *

.

.

Due to an extended photo shoot, Adrien arrived late to his classes on Friday, just after lunch, and shuffled to his seat feeling somewhat less embarrassed about it than usual. He'd been preoccupied all morning. Between Ladybug, Tikki, and Marinette, his mind was a whirlpool of uncertainties and possibilities, and by the time he settled in his school desk he had long since accepted that he was not going to absorb anything this week, either in school or at work. He was simply too far away.

So he gave up, and spent the majority of the afternoon daydreaming, only paying attention to the teachers when absolutely necessary. All classes at all grade levels were heading toward review-mode anyway, with the end of semester exams only two weeks away. This left his mind free to wander.

And wander it did, about four feet behind him, where the elusive Marinette Dupain-Cheng sat quietly scratching in her notebook.

The girl had always been somewhat of a mystery to him and, after last night's rendezvous with her as Chat, she was more so than ever. The day they met was seared into his brain; after all, it was his first day of public school, and that made her the first true friend he ever made outside of the realm of his father's influence. Needless to say, that made her profoundly special to him. But that first day had been a whirlwind. First she had hated him, then she had avoided him, and then she had finally seemed receptive to his offer of friendship.

It wasn't until much later in their seconde year that he realized she aspired to be more.

Yet two years later, halfway through their terminale year, they were not much closer as friends than they'd been back then. After he realized that Marinette had feelings for him, he'd always been too nervous to pursue a deeper friendship. Because, well…

Adrien snuck another glance over his shoulder at the girl in question. It was nearing the end of history-their second to last class period-but she seemed as energetic as if the day had just begun. She leaned far over her notebook, gripping her pencil tight with her eyebrows furrowed and her tongue poking out slightly from the corner of her mouth. There was no point denying the obvious. He'd be flat-out lying if he said he didn't reciprocate at least some of Marinette's feelings. She was kind and clever and resourceful and beautiful and…

(He sighed, turning his textbook page along with the rest of the class.)

...and not Ladybug.

Sure, he'd _love_ to date Marinette. If (and that was a big 'if') he wasn't already irrevocably in love with Ladybug. But he was, so he couldn't. Sure he might never stand a real chance with Ladybug, and sure he was an idiot for sidestepping an amazing girl who (for whatever crazy reason) genuinely liked him. But even if he gave up forever on LB and gave it a shot with Mari, he'd still be in love with LB. That wouldn't be fair to Marinette. He could never do that to her.

But it didn't help that Marinette was basically everything that Ladybug wasn't.

Guilt riddled him with bullet holes even as he thought that horrible thought. But it was true. The girl sitting behind him had _everything_ that Ladybug lacked.

Marinette was _here,_ for starters. Within reach. (Which he proved when the teacher passed out a review sheet and he turned around to hand her the pile with a grin.) Marinette was a name and a face, with a life and friends and family and hobbies and aspirationsㅡin other words, she was the physical embodiment of everything that Ladybug kept hidden from him. Everything he so desperately wanted from Ladybug but would never get. So how could Adrien _not_ look at Mari and want her?

With that thought he realized he was, in fact, looking at her again, and swiveled around in his chair to look back at the eighth chapter of the physics text. He really needed to stop thinking about this.

.

.

Alya couldn't help herself when she caught Adrien staring at Marinette for the tenth time that day. She nudged Marinette just in time for her to see Adrien hastily returning his attention to the textbook. But the implication must have gone way over Mari's head, because she turned to Alya with squinty-eyed confusion before looking back at the teacher and the whiteboard.

Alya groaned. Leave it to Mari to be suddenly involved with the lecture, right when Adrien became obsessed with her.

Little did Alya know, Marinette had not been paying a lick of attention to anything all day. She didn't notice the way Adrien kept looking at her, didn't hear anything the teacher was saying, and didn't really see anything in the classroom. As soon as she woke up that morning she'd retreated into the armchair in the back of her head, where she spent the day sifting through countless scrapbooks of memory and possibility.

She just missed Tikki so much.

And…

And the idea of sharing her identity with Chat had all but consumed her since yesterday.

But she couldn't consider the reveal without also considering what might come after. The two of them would probably (scratch that, definitely) start to spend time together outside of their masks. They would grow much closer than they already were. Best friends. She would introduce him as the new guy in his civilian clothes to Alya, to her parents, to Nino, to… Adrien.

That thought stopped her cold, and she totally missed the page turn until Alya reached over and turned it for her.

Now why was the thought of introducing Chat to Adrien so unnerving and unimaginable? _Come back to that later…_

In turn she too would get to meet Chat's friends, and the mysterious father figure he so rarely mentioned. Over time she would learn his favorite places to eat, what he did in his spare time, and what he wanted to do with his life. He would tell her proudly that he's taken fencing for years and that's why his baton behaved like an extension of his arm, and Marinette would finally have a chance to say _I know that you silly alleycat. I know a fencer when I see one._

(Because of her crush on Adrien… _Ugh, why, Mari? Come back to that later!_ )

Halfway through the last class of the day, she shook her head to clear it and reached into her bag for her sketchbook, setting it on top of her blank page of history notes. School was almost over for the day anyway, and she couldn't concentrate. So she drew while she thought.

As scared as she was to reveal herself to Chat and to learn who he was in turn, she had to admit the inevitable truthㅡif only to herself. If they revealed, they would become inseparable. It was just the way of it. They were simply too compatible _not_ to work out as friends once they knew the truth.

At the word 'compatible' she blushed to herself and accidentally smudged the line she was drawing.

She hadn't meant to think of it that way, but still. There it was. There'd been a time when she'd written off Chat's flirting as harmless and fun and totally unserious. But in her heart of hearts, she knew he loved her. So she knew what would come. Maybe not right away… but in time, he would ask her on a date.

Would she say yes? Now, that was the million dollar question.

He'd asked her before, and she had always laughed and booped him on the nose before turning him down. After all, it was impossible. She could just picture it now: Ladybug and Chat Noir showing up at a restaurant downtown to share a plate of spaghetti by the light of the moon. Ha! She snorted under her breath at the mere idea of it. Alya would have to be hospitalized for a heart attack.

But just as quickly as it came, her amusement vanished. A totally different scenario entered her imagination in place of the silly spaghetti scene.

Instead of Chat Noir asking her for a date, she took a moment to picture someone she had yet to meet. The boy beneath the mask. She surprised herself with the intensity of her curiosity as she imagined such a thing. Vividly she envisioned a tall, lean blonde, his face obscured by the glare of the morning sun, pulling her knuckles to his lips for a chivalrous kiss. What would he wear? How would he stand? What might it be like to walk with him down a dark unlit road for _fun_ for once, instead of necessity? Most importantly, what sort of man lay dormant below the surface of those neon catlike eyes?

When the history teacher turned the students loose to study with their seat partners for the final fifteen minutes of class, Marinette didn't hear. She was too stuck in her drawing and her circular introspection.

Looking over, Alya giggled and snatched up Marinette's sketchpad. "Mari, you haven't been paying any attention, have you? Stop drawing and copy my notes. We just found out that the history exam will be open book, and I think it's gonna be on history, ma cheri, not on Chat Noir."

Flushing like mad, Marinette dove for the sketchpad. But Alya held the smaller girl back at arm's length, her playful teasing turning into intrigue as she drank in the details of the drawingㅡthe drawing of Chat Noir that Marinette had been slaving over for the last twenty minutes of class. _Kill me now._ She was never going to hear the end of this.

Noticing the skirmish, Nino turned around in his seat and snickered at Alya's easy long-armed victoryㅡuntil he actually saw the drawing. When Alya flipped it one-eighty to show him he stopped laughing immediately, adjusting his glasses as he took the book from his girlfriend's hands.

"Woah, that's uncanny." Nino appraised Marinette with slack-jawed admiration. "Didn't know you could draw so well, Mar. Ohh yeah," he remembered suddenly. "I forgot. You designed a cover for Jagged Stone back in seconde year. Man, that's so cool!"

The poor besotted artist in question was profoundly embarrassed by the attention, but way too nice to demand her notebook back from anyone but Alya. All she could do now was stew in mortified silence. "Well, I started learning when I was little," she admitted, cringing eternally as Nino flipped through the rest of the book before returning to the recent-most Chat page. "Back when I first got interested in designing," she elaborated weakly. "You can't really design without drawing, so…"

"Can I see?" Adrien asked politely. Marinette froze solid. Nino tried to pass it over, but Adrien only scowled at him. "I was asking Mari," he told his best friend. "It's not very nice to look at people's sketchbooks without asking. Art can be really personal."

"Shit, uh… sorry, Mar." Both Nino and Alya became suddenly contrite, looking to each other with a grimace.

"No, it's okay!" Marinette said with a noncommittal hand wave. She wasn't angry, just embarrassed. "Really," she assured them. "Uhm, thanks for asking first, though, Adrien." Why was he so nice? It wasn't fair! Every time she thought she'd begun to escape, he reeled her back in. "You can look. Everyone else already has, anyway," she growled at Alya as Adrien accepted the notebook from Nino.

Adrien's heart fluttered wildly when he saw the drawing that Marinette had done. It was just so… "Amazing," he said out loud. He'd seen a lot of Chat Noir fanart (being a devoted follower of the Ladyblog) but this one really took the cake. It was a detailed graphite sketch in shades of soft black and gray, and was likely unfinished. It was simple and modest. But it was just so _real_.

Normally people drew him in typical superhero poses. The three-point stance, or lackadaisically waving his baton, or claws out mid-fight, or even bowing to his lady, as he was wont to do. But Mari had drawn him standing still. On the right half of the page he leaned tiredly on his baton; his hair was ruffled beyond belief, his lips were curved in a rueful half-smile that spoke of almost-but-not-quite guilt, and his eyes burned with devotion. It was the way he looked at his lady after a particularly rough fight. The way he looked at her when he was toying with the idea of saying _I love you._

There was no praise for the drawing that would have been adequate. Marinette had bullseyed him.

"Amazing," he repeated. "Mari, could I…" _Oh god, no, what are you saying? Don't ask her that! "_ This might be weird, but can I have this?"

Marinette's jaw flapped a couple times before she found the words to respond. "Buㅡbut it's not even finished!"

"I'm so sorry, that was rude, it's your drawingㅡ"

"No no, you can have it!" she interrupted, desperately ignoring Alya and Nino's raucous laughter. "I don't care, it's just a drawing. But umm… maybe I could finish it first?" She tapped her fingertips together. "I was gonna add Ladybug too. I mean, if you want."

"Really? Wow, Marinette, I would love that. Thank you. You really don't mind?"

"I don't mind!" She took the notebook back, biting her lip. Why was he so _nice?_ "What are friends for?"

"I'll photocopy my notes for you later," Alya whispered, knowing a lost cause when she saw one.

Marinette spent the last ten minutes sketching in Ladybug. She'd been thinking of the akuma they fought two weeks ago when she put her pencil to the paper. The fight had led them out over the Seine, and when Chat put himself between her and a careening motorcycle it had sent him into an unconscious dive off the side of the bridge. She'd been forced to abandon the fight to leap in after him, terrified that he would be swept away orㅡor _drowned_ ㅡ

In the end it had all turned out fine, of course. As usual.

 _Win. Fist bump. Warning beep._

 _Wave goodbye. Run away. Change back._

 _Life goes on._

But between the warning beep and the farewell, she had scolded Chat for being so flippant with his own safety. With his life. _You could have died,_ she'd reminded him, willing her voice not to crack with emotion. But it cracked anyway, and for a moment all of Chat Noir's gallant confidence cleared, leaving behind something a little bit too real for her to write it off as empty flirting.

He'd leaned on his baton and given her that look, the one that screamed 'we both know I'll do it again,' and told her, _There are worse ways to die than protecting the ones you love._

.

.

The temperature dipped to even lower that night after an hour or three of sporadic flurries, which meant Marinette had to bundle up in triple layers (her warmest shirt and pants plus an ugly Christmas sweater plus her (faux) fur-lined trench coat on top of it all) before slipping out onto her balcony and scaling down the side of the house. She shivered as she readjusted her clothing on the street below. It was far more difficult and dangerous to sneak out as Marinette than as Ladybug, and she was appreciating her powers now more than she ever had.

But when she arrived at the building where she was supposed to meet Chat and craned her neck skyward, she ate her words. _Now_ she appreciated her powers. Why hadn't this problem occurred to her before now?

It took her a few minutes to climb the stairs up to the fifth floor where they ended, but then nearly twenty more to get from there to the rooftop, using a series of ledges and pipes until finally clambering onto the angled roof tiles with relief.

But the relief was immediately replaced with nerves when she laid eyes on Chat; he stood with his back to her about fifteen meters away, facing the long downward slope of rooftops that led to the bright Eiffel Tower, whose stargazing spire disappeared into the clouds and thus spread its golden glow for miles around in the sky.

None of this would have been necessary if he knew who she was. She'd made up her mind today. She was going to tell him.

It was at that moment that Adrien realized Ladybug had arrived, because Tikki wigged out. The little kwami leapt off his shoulder and went zooming across the rooftop behind him toward her miraculous holder. His cat ears perked toward their happy reunion, and he dug his boots a little deeper in the snow, revamping his resolve to stay where he was. It was all he could do not to turn around.

"Chat, how did you find her?"

At the sound of his name on her tongue, he released a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. Her musical soprano voice was like water on the desert sand in his bones. Two whole days with no Ladybug! A longer absence would have killed him.

"Luck," he laughed into the chill wind. "Pure luck. You should really be more careful with your kwami, my lady…"

Marinette's stomach turned over. Hearing him call her that while she wasn't in costume brushed a weird, vulnerable place in her heart. She nuzzled Tikki's cheek and then ushered her into the old messenger bag she'd dug out of her closet, where the kwami would be warm. "Thank you so much for taking care of her, and returning her. I don't know how I could ever repay you."

"No need," he assured her, gesturing to the air. It was weird. Talking to her like this.

"Chat. I…" She lied; she knew how to repay him. "I want you to know who I am." Long sure steps closed the gap between them, but still he didn't turn.

 _Fuck_ , he thought. _Fuck me sideways_. "Ladybug, I can't. We can't! You-you know why we can't."

"Yes, I know, but I…"

A few meters shy of him, Marinette faltered. She was touched by his resolution not to turn around, and simultaneously confused by her desperate need for him to just give up and look at her. A few days ago he'd been as keen as ever on learning who she was. Had he changed his mind? Her bag rustled then at her waist and she found herself glaring daggers at it. Of course. Tikki must have gotten to him.

"But Chat," she launched anew, "wouldn't this all be so much easier if we knew?" She'd been thinking too hard about this to back out now, and once Marinette Dupain-Cheng decided something there was no dissuading her. "It would be better. Different." She hugged her coat tighter to her chest, her voice suddenly small as she gave weight to the possibility that had been flitting around her head like half-realized sparks. "We could be different."

A few feet ahead, Chat's shoulders slouched forward. "You don't have to convince me," he sighed wistfully. "You already know how badly I want that. But I won't endanger you, Ladybug."

Marinette fought the urge to stamp her feet on the snow-layered tiles; she had to tread carefully here or she might slip and slide all the way off the roof. Tikki! Of all the times for him to shift his stance, did he really have to do it _now?_ Now that she was finally ready to take the leap? Marinette shook her fist at the wispy night sky for a moment, cursing her fate. _What kind of cruel joke is this, universe?_

She tried one more time. "I know it would be a little reckless. But doesn't the reward outweigh the cost, at some point?"

Adrien hung his head. "No reward could outweigh the cost if I were to lose you."

"Oh, chaton."

He jumped in surprise when he felt Ladybug's arms snake under his own and around his waist. She was hugging him from behind. He looked down in shock, seeing two arms covered in the pastel pink cotton of a winter coat, empty of a Ladybug pattern of any kind. The brown gloved hands that crossed over his chest were so small they barely poked out of her coat sleeves. Swallowing thickly, he rested his arms on hers, spreading his hands out over her wrists. This moment was wrong, all wrong. She should have her mask on. Or he should be maskless, like her. What he _shouldn't_ be was completely unable to turn around and look his lady in the eye.

All the muscles in his neck pulled taut when she laid her head on the middle of his back.

"Please," she whispered. "I want you to know. I want to know."

His bpm accelerated into the redzone. Ladybug's maskless face was pressed against his shoulder blades and he was dying. This was it, he was dead, he was actually dead andㅡ

"I'm coming around to the other side now," she warned, and he felt her following through with it. In a panic he closed his eyes; she had entered his peripherals. Why was she doing this to him? Why _now?_

 _Tikki!_ he cursed internally.

Face to face with Chat, standing before him _as Ladybug_ but without her spotsㅡMarinette thought she would feel a rush of adrenaline. Exhilaration! But now, her heart only ached. There was a new level to Chat's devotion that she was uncovering here with sadness, and that was just how far he would go to protect her. That he would sacrifice everything he wanted to hold a thin umbrella of security over her head.

And that pained look on his face was a knife in her stomach.

She raised a hand without thinking, bringing it to his cheek. His frown deepened even as he leaned into her hand, and she pushed farther, running her gloved fingers past his jaw around to the backside of his neck where his blonde hair feathered out. This quiet, pensive side of her partner was hard to look at, in the same way the naked sun was hard to look at. In a manner of speaking, the person standing in front of her right now with his eyes barely shut wasn't Chat Noir at all. He was something beyond all that red-hot bravado. Something rounder. Deeper. Something with much softer edges than he pretended to.

For once she was able to see with crystal clarity the boy beneath the mask. And as she considered that boy and everything he had done, the bottom of her stomach dropped out.

 _Oh no,_ she thought. _I love him._

It took less than five seconds after she realized that for her to pull him down by the neck to kiss him, rising up on her toes to meet him halfway.

Even so, she was an inch too short and didn't make contact until Adrien caught onto her motives. Head bowed, he opened his eyes by the thinnest sliver, just enough to see her bottom lip and register that _yes, Ladybug is trying to kiss me._ So he did what any fool in love would do. He kissed her. For the first millisecond, his plan was to play it chaste and gentlemanly. It really was. But their lips had scarcely made full contact when he shuddered and dragged her all the way all at once into a desperate, iron embrace.

At that point the unending inner monologue that narrated Marinette's life took a giant gasp and flat-lined. She'd always assumed the whole 'there were fireworks' thing was just fluffy poetry by lovesick exaggerators like herself. But when Chat closed his arms around her and pulled her entire body flush against his, persuading her mouth to open for him without using any words, it dawned on her that poets only settled on the word 'fireworks' because there were simply no descriptors, in any known language, to describe the static electric tidal wave of raw physical sensation that one human could inflict on another.

Everything else fell away. For a minute, Chat Noir and Marinette Dupain-Cheng were the only things keeping the other tethered to this earth.

And a long, long minute it was.

Even when Marinette pulled back an inch, the kiss didn't seem quite over, since they still shared a hot island of breath in an otherwise freezing environment. Chat rested his forehead on hers, a small noise of complaint rising at the back of his throat at her withdrawal. Marinette's brain had yet to resuscitate. The top of his leather mask pressed into her forehead, his nose nudging insistently against hers. All she could see from here were his closed eyes. Each individual eyelash…

She didn't realize that she had brought the pad of her thumb to his right eyelid until he made a strained, growling sound that shocked her to life, and spoke. "You're really testing my self-control here, LB."

A long, exasperated sigh on her part warmed his neck and jaw, and caused him to accidentally slacken his grip on her. Which then caused her to fall six inches through the loosely packed snow to the roof tiles with a surprised _oof_. Whoops. He had no clue he'd actually lifted her off the ground.

Judging by the sound of it, she was now rustling around in her purse. "Transform me, please, Tikki."

Only when the flash of pink light that bled through his eyelids had totally faded did Adrien finally deem it safe to open them. Even still, he opened them slowly, hardly daring to believe that the life-changing kiss had truly happened and that the person it happened with was truly his lady. But as his eyes adjusted swiftly to the low light, there she was. In all her glory. Her cute freckled cheeks were far redder than usual below her spotted maskㅡdue to the cold, perhaps. Or perhaps because they had just _kissed_ and it was _better than he'd ever dreamed_ and _Ladybug_ was the one who initiated it (!) and what was even _happening right now_ _ㅡ_

Nope _._ Stop _._ Justㅡ

Slow down.

One thing at a time.

Reeling himself in at lightspeed, Adrien chanced a cocky grin. "Hey," he greeted, as if Ladybug had only just shown up to meet him.

"Hey," Marinette returned with equal casualness, mirroring his smirk. _Holy heck I just kissed Chat Noir. What was I thinking?_

 _(Do it again!_ the little demon on her shoulder shrieked, while the angel on the other side went on packing her suitcase.)

"Did you, um…? Feel? That?" As she spoke her voice raised in pitch until it was almost inaudible. She was at a loss how to phrase the question burning on her tongue where his had so recently been.

But somehow, despite the vague phrasing, he knew exactly what she meant. There'd been a sharp, distinctive, very physical tug behind his heart before he collapsed into that kiss like a neutron star into a singularity. It was a dose of gravity that he still hadn't escaped. It occurred to him as he lowered his forehead back to hers that he probably never would.

"Chat?"

Oh crap, he still hadn't answered her. He nodded. "Yeah, I felt it. I uh… I thought it was just me."

Her fingertips threaded back into his hair and she blinked up at him slowly, distantly, like she was trying to figure out where a puzzle piece fit. "No," she said, "it wasn't just you. I definitely felt it."

They searched deep in each other's eyes for longer than they'd ever dared, trying to decide whether that jolt when they kissed had just been the result of a particularly mind-blowing liplock, or if it harkened of the same higher order of power that gave them their abilities. Of something magical.

Tangentially… if it was magical, what did it mean?

It was Marinette who broke first, dancing a few steps backwards out of his arms. "Chat," she eased, wary of the unbridled elation that was slowly spreading across his face. "You mean so much to me. More than anyone ever has. But you know we can never…" Another bouncy step back. "We can never be anything more than friends if all we ever see of each other is red and black."

Adrien was unphased by Ladybug's shift. He may have been standing on a roof in the middle of Paris but his soul had lifted off and was currently doing laps around the moon. He crossed his arms and puffed up his chest. "I know," he lamented, "but it's a small price to pay if it keeps my lady out of Hawkmoth's line of sight."

Marinette had to look away. She wasn't so sure. The price was looking steeper and steeper to her by the minute. "It's late, chaton. I should go."

After a single gallant bow, Chat slid the twenty feet down to the edge of the sloped rooftop, dislodging an entire shelf of snow that cascaded past him over the edge, then snapped his baton out to its full extent. From there he looked back at her, an echo of their moment flashing briefly across his face. "Till next time, lovebug."

Ladybug stuck out her hip, wrinkling her nose at him. _This_ she could handle. "Ugh," she groaned. "That one is so not going to stick."

If anything, Chat's grin grew wider. "Whatever you say, lovebug." By the time he leapt from the ledge she had already zipped away.

* * *

.

.

 **Author's notes:**

Vital PSA! Please note that this story is canon divergent, around the time where Adrien steals the book from Gabriel. All that stuff with Lila and the extra stones (and their new holders) would have severely complicated this already complex story. You can safely assume that stuff still exists, they just haven't found out about the rest of them yet, or seen the book or anything. None of that stuff will be touched on here.

Additionally, I started writing this story weeks and weeks ago, way before the Christmas special ever aired. So that episode does NOT exist in this story's universe. This means any plot-relevant information we found out about in the Christmas episode is SUBJECT TO CHANGE in this story.

(Perhaps most importantly: forget anything you learned in that episode about Adrien's mother).


	4. Friction

**[Friction]**

 _Second law of friction_ :

Friction is independent of the area of contact, so long as there is **at least one** **area of contact.**

* * *

.

.

The streak of good fortune that had graced the city of Paris in December (only one akuma so far this month!) ended abruptly at four in the morning on Thursday, when a delivery driver for a 24-hour pizza place got fed up with the overnight customers. Sleep-deprived Marinette threw her phone across the room when the alert went off at 4:15am and swung away to end it as quickly as possible. So sleepy was she that she forgot what had happened between Chat and Ladybug the night before, less than seven hours ago. That is, until the cat himself swooped in to snatch her out of the way of a stampede of reanimated pepperoni pigs.

"Lovebug," he greeted cordially, and she convulsed in his arms with the sudden remembrance of it all. Unable to keep his hold on his flailing partner, Chat finally just dropped her. A ghost of a smile dusted his cheeks while she righted herself. "You good?"

"Fine. Fine! Just... tired?" Oh god. Oh man. That wasn't a dream; that had happened. She had kissed him yesterday and in return he had tried to meld their bodies together and it was _really good and_ ㅡ "Incoming!"

They split up to avoid the cackling deliveryman.

But no matter how far or how fast she ran, Marinette could not outrun that kissㅡnor the array of toppling dominoes that it set into motion like so many tipping skyscrapers in her emotional cityscape.

As Saturday dawned, the young adult made her way out onto the terrace above her attic bedroom. With her morning coffee in one hand and a down blanket wrapped around her shoulders, she was more akin in posture to a child than the eighteen year old that she was. Like an enchanted-to-life marshmallow she slunk across the tile to shake some of the frozen morning dew from the leaves of her wilted garden. Tikki was currently poking her head out from under the blanket, near Mari's collarbone. The little kwami had weathered the death throes of Marinette's platonic feelings toward Chat Noir for three days now, ever since the night they were reunited, and sensed the coming end of Mari's internal storm.

"Everything's going to be okay, Marinette." _More okay than you could ever know,_ Tikki thought as loudly as she could, nestling herself into her friend's collarbone.

"I don't see how!" Marinette entreated, giving up on freeing her plants from the layer of ice crystals as her teeth clacked together and as a shiver passed over her. The hot coffee helped. She should really go back inside, but the biting air was helping to clear her mind. "I…" The problem wasn't that she was in love with Chat. On its own, she could probably handle that, regardless of its difficulties. She bit her lip hard, squeezing her eyes shut as she admitted her _real_ quandary for the first time. "I'm in love with two people! I'm a horrible person," she added in a harsh whisper.

Tikki frowned. "You're not horrible," she admonished. "You're human." If only Marinette knew how not-horrible she was. If anything, this development made her the purest soul on this young green planet.

"I just don't know what to do."

Marinette bunched the blanket up underneath her and sat on the mosaic bench by the wall, leaning back to observe a plane as it left its white trail across the rippled oceanic sky. The weak winter storm that had been circling northern France had at last given up and gone south. By the beginning of the next week, what little snow had gathered would likely be gone.

"It's probably time to give up on Adrien," she admitted softly, "if I'm being realistic. He's never seen me that way and probably never will. But I still have feelings for himㅡfeelings I can't simply switch off because I've fallen in love with someone else. That's not… fair. To Chat," she clarified. "If Chat and I were ever toㅡ But we can't!" she interrupted herself with a burst of energy.

Tikki nodded patiently. She'd been morose for days over the fact that she must let Marinette wade through this dreary swamp alone. And she had to; any advice she offered would be tainted by her knowledge of Chat's identity, which was not her business to divulge.

"Chat and I could never date or be together orㅡor anything!" Marinette pressed, almost like she was trying to convince herself.

"But you love him."

Tikki let it slip before she could help herself. Well, it was true! Besides, the worst possible thing right now would be for Marinette to pull away from Chat Noir. They needed each other, regardless of the complications. Oh, screw it. Plagg was right about not interfering, but then, when had that ever stopped them before? Besides, she owed Marinette _something_ to make up for not being able to tell her that Chat was Adrien. The girl needed a push.

"You love him," Tikki pressed, weaponizing Marinette's own confession.

Marinette closed her eyes to the blue sky, letting a deep breath in and out before replying.

This week had been a roller coaster; first she lost Tikki and then all that stuff with Chat. ( _You mean kissing him_ , she reminded herself with a slap. _That stuff_.) Then afterward he had been nothing short of ruthless with his flirting. Not overdoing it or being rude or anything like that, just ruthless. Like it was his god given right to say things that made her blush down to her toes. Last night after their joint patrol he had followed her away from their last stop (the tower, as always before) even after she said goodbye, and kissed her hand gently on the ground below before she could get a word in edgewise.

Her heart had sunk then as she realized she couldn't go on not addressing what had happened between them on that roof a few nights ago. Sure, he hadn't exactly been tackling her for kisses since then, but she could see it in his wide, dilated eyes as he brought her knuckles to his lips. The only thing he was waiting for was an invitation: one she wasn't sure she could give.

 _Chat_ , she had begun delicately. _We can't…_ She floundered for the words. _We can't be this way. I thought you understood that._ It was her fault, she realized. She had led him to the water only to tell him he couldn't drink.

Chat straightened, then, but still didn't let go of her hand. _I understand just fine,_ he told her, an odd airy quality tainting his voice _. I know we can't date like normal people. I know I can't take you out to dinner or surprise you with flowers at your house or anything like that. But I can't go back to a time before that kiss either, Ladybug._

It was only when he released her hand that she realized how much she had been leaning on itㅡnot physically, but emotionally. Without it she was weightless. Some of that must have shown on her face, because Chat cocked his head at her, ears twitching in curiosity as he finished his tantalizing thought.

 _Can you?_

Slouching even further into her blanket tomb on the bench, Marinette took three more extra deep breaths before answering Tikki.

"Yes," she mumbled. "I love him." As the confirmation left her mouth she pulled her blanket up over her head, burying herself and the kwami inside, only faint squiggles of light leaking through the seams. "I don't even know him. I don't know anything about him. How can I love him?"

"That isn't true," Tikki said softly, her face glowing pink where the tiny stripes of light hit her. "Just because you don't know the intimate details of his life doesn't mean you don't know him. You've been with him at some of the most trying and decisive moments of his life, and he with you. In some ways you know each other better than anyone else in the world. And..." Tikki gulped, wondering if she was going too far. What would Plagg say? "And you know him better than you know Adrien."

Marinette was quiet for a long minute, as she considered Tikki's careful choice of words. Sure, she knew the intimate details of Adrien's life. But did that really hold a candle to the deep, unshakeable camaraderie she had crafted with Chat through years of friendship? Finally she said, "I think you're right about that." She knew Chat better.

Tikki breathed a sigh of relief. A few days ago, a comment like that would have made Marinette's head explode. It seemed she was at last moving past denial toward acceptance. "So what are you going to do?"

The answer was a desperate whimper and a strained, "I don't know."

Ever the patient friend, Tikki patted Marinette's collarbone. "What do you _want_ to do?" she amended.

To Tikki's surprise, Marinette flushed deeply and averted her gaze. "I want to kiss Chat again," she pouted. "But, it just seems insane to pursue anything with him when we can never get past a certain point. There's a roadblock at the end of our masks. A dead end."

Reaching up to push the blanket off Marinette's head and bathe the duo once again in morning sunlight, Tikki took Marinette's cheeks in her hands, staring her down with compassion. "I can't tell you what to do, cheri. Sometimes there is no right answer. So, at the risk of sounding cliche, just follow your heart. Remember, rivers follow the path of least resistance for a _reason_. Do what comes naturally and you'll end up happy."

.

.

 _Do what comes naturally and you'll end up happy._

Those words rattled like seeds through Marinette's bones all weekend, taking root and sprouting. So on Sunday evening when she saw Adrien, she did what felt natural without even thinking. On any other day she would have waved timidly and hurried away as fast as her feet would carry her. But today wasn't any other day. Something had changed within her this week, for better or worse, and therefore she did something new.

She'd just been to see a movie with Alya, Rose, and Juleka, and they were all walking back along the _Rue de la Roquette_ together as far as they could before they had to split off toward their respective homes. Down the quiet road they laughed and joked and generally made fun of each other over how handsome the male lead was. They could hardly remember the plot and action (which was basic, anyway) since the main actor had ripped off his shirt halfway through the movie and never put it back on.

"I dunno," Juleka blushed when it was her turn to be ruthlessly teased. "I actually thought the actress was prettier."

Marinette pulled up short, tilting her head at Juleka, who was now hiding unsuccessfully beneath her hair. But before she could push the subject, Alya squealed.

"I almost forgot!" She dug through her purse until she came up with her chunky Nikon camera, eyes on the other side of the road. "I wanna take a picture of the LadyNoir statue before all the snow melts off. I wanted to use my nice camera for this one. I'll be quick, I promise. Come on, guys!"

The other three could only shrug and follow their driven journalistic friend as she sprinted across the road between light cycles. Marinette had to admit, the towering statue looked picturesque in the wide open square, a light dusting of snow frozen in Ladybug's carved hair, falling into the collar of Chat Noir's suit where he crouched below her and piling in sparkly tufts on his shoulders. The four friends lingered on the sidewalk a ways away while Alya shifted back and forth, trying to decide how best to frame it in her lens. As she shifted more and more to the right, going for the dramatic angle, she pulled her camera away and swore.

"What?" Marinette asked.

"There's someone sitting underneath it. I wonder if he'd move if I asked him? Just for a minute…"

Marinette skipped over to Alya, and as she did she saw him, a figure sitting on the ground at the far right side of the statue, slumped against the enormous engraved base beneath Chat Noir.

"Hey!" Alya called, waving, and the boy looked over. "Oh shit," she whispered, pulling a face.

Marinette pulled a face too, but hers was less shock and more sympathy. "It's... Adrien?"

Her feet started walking before she'd even decided to go over there. Adrien watched her coming with blank curiosity, slipping a bookmark into the book he'd been reading. Gulping, Marinette afforded a glance over her shoulder to her friends. None had followed her to the statue. They were all doing extremely poor jobs of pretending to be carrying on a conversation at the sidewalk, instead of eavesdropping, which was definitely what they were really doing.

"Hey Marinette."

She bit her lip, hating the way his voice sent shivers down her legs that had nothing to do with the cold. "What are you doing out here all alone?" She peered down at him with a gentle frown. "It's freezing." There was something forlorn about this that she couldn't quite put her finger on. Sure, Adrien enjoyed solitude; that much she had gathered from the amount of time he spent alone. But something about this… Maybe it was the slouch in his shoulders, or the circles under his eyes, or maybe it was just because she loved him. Whatever it was, it drove her to intervene.

Adrien cracked a weak smile, waving his paperback book at her. "Oh, you know," he joked, "just chilling."

The compassion dropped out of Marinette like bricks through cellophane. "Oh my god bye."

She hadn't even gotten a fraction of an inch away before Adrien shot up, grabbing her arm. "Wait, wait!" he laughed. "I'm sorry, that was terrible."

"It was," she deadpanned, eyeing his book, half expecting the title on the spine to be _Bad Puns 101 by Chat Noir._ It wasn't; it was a graphic novel called _Watchmen,_ its cover adorned by a smiley face spattered with a single drop of blood. Wow. Good taste. " Alright," she beckoned, "let's go, Pagliacci." She drank in his gobsmacked look when she referenced the book he'd been reading.

"Um… where?"

Marinette was already halfway back to the sidewalk, and turned back to him. "Do you have anywhere better to be?"

Adrien glanced up at the statue, then gathered up his messenger bag and caught up with Marinette. "No. I suppose not."

"Then let's go," she repeated.

.

.

Juleka split off first a few streets later, Rose left soon after, and when Alya turned away toward her own family's apartment, it finally dawned on Adrien that Marinette was taking him home with her. He didn't know what to say about this development, so he said nothing. They walked in an almost-comfortable silence, punctuated every few minutes when Marinette remembered another quote from _Watchmen_ and found a way to weasel it into casual conversation. He snickered at her Rorschach impression, feeling miles away from his problems.

When she and the others had walked by he'd been on the verge of tears. After yet another fight with his father, he had stormed off set in the middle of a shoot, effectively ruining the Agreste partnership with the model he'd been working with, and cutting one more stress fracture between he and his father. He hadn't meant to let his father get to him like that, but he was already in such a precarious place because of this week's developments with Ladybug. He was so scared of pushing her too fast, or not pushing her enough, or that he'd wake up and realize their kiss had been a fever dream. He couldn't concentrate on anything else. He couldn't think, he couldn't sleep; there was nothing he wanted more than to kiss her again, every day forever and ever. But it was Ladybug's move. She knew what he wanted. It was down to her now to decide whether she wanted a relationship like the one he was offering her.

 _A partial relationship,_ he had thought to himself under the statue, letting his head fall back so he could glare up at the formidable figure of Chat Noir. They could never have the completeness that other couples enjoyed, and he knew that. Whatever they might have together would be fractured and broken until the day they revealed themselves to each other. Could he blame her for not wanting that? No. In fact, he should never have pursued her in the first place for precisely that reason. He wanted her to be happy, not… stuck in hell with him.

That's where he was when Marinette found him; stuck in hell.

Now that Marinette was here distracting him, he was awash in sweet relief from the pressure for the first time this week. She was so nice, and her kindness radiated around her in a warm sphere that he was grateful to find himself inside. It offered a distraction from his agony over Ladybug, and he accepted it with wide open arms.

Until Marinette pushed open the door to the bakery. When he caught sight of the interior, nerves gripped Adrien's throat tight.

"Hi Maman, hi Papa!" Marinette flitted between her father (who was struggling to fluff a christmas tree) and her mother (who was standing on a wobbly table in the center of the store trying to hang tinsel from the ceiling tiles) and kissed them each on the cheek. "I brought home a friend to help decorate the bakery. You remember Adrien, right?" She said this in a strained way, as if willing her parents not to embarrass her.

Adrien waved from the doorway, feeling insanely out of place in the face of an intimate family tradition. He was intruding. Why was he here? This was a private family moment that he had just burst in on and he had no business imposing on them likeㅡ

"Great!" Tom beamed, moving to tower over Adrien. If Adrien was tall, Tom Dupain was a behemoth. He placed a massive arm behind his back to steer him in out of the cold, giving him no time to back out of this. "We could really use another person to help string the lights, if you know what I mean." Tom nudged Adrien, using his eyes to point at his wife and daughter. His very short wife and daughter.

"I'll have you know I can string them just fine," Sabine shot back, and in her agitation at being called out she stepped backward off the table. Adrien lunged, getting his weight under her just before she hit the ground, and together they fell in a heap on the hardwood floor. "Alright then," Sabine said breathlessly as Marinette and Tom helped her and Adrien to their feet. "You can string the lights, Adrien."

"Good reflexes," Marinette noted as her father began to pile string after string of lights into Adrien's open arms. "You don't mind, do you? Helping, I mean. I realize I kind of interrupted your solitude."

"I don't mind at all!" He shifted his arms as the lights tried to unravel toward the ground, an incredulous idea occurring to him. Did Marinette think he _liked_ being alone? "Really," he emphasized. "I was super lonely," he added, only loud enough for Marinette to hear, then followed Tom away toward the windows to receive direction on how to hang these confounded tangled things.

Soon he had forgotten why he was ever nervous about being here in the first place. The Dupain-Chengs gave him no room to feel uncomfortableㅡrather, they made him feel like he was one of the family. Maybe that was why Alya came over here almost every day. These people were so warm and welcoming. They spent an hour laughing over the faint sound of radio carols coming from the kitchen in the back, and Adrien soon gave up politely refusing the fancy aromatic pastries they pestered him to taste. Screw his model diet. He was on the exit road out of that career anyway, if today's debacle was any indication, and there was no way over his dead body he was missing out on free homemade pastries.

When Sabine dug the ornament box out of a storage closet and handed it straight to Adrien, he went starry-eyed, like he'd been handed the keys to the city. All his life, the Christmas tree in the front hall of the Agreste mansion had been done up professionally by a sought-after interior decorator. He was used to itㅡto the pristine, cookie cutter look of the thing. He was also used to the famous Christmas tree downtown, and the fancy picturesque ones at various high-class holiday events thrown by one colleague or another of his father's. He opened the cardboard box and reached inside, carefully extracting a pink ornament made of construction paper, with a young school picture of Marinette's glued on one side and the year 2006 written on the back in poor handwriting, under a small crayon drawing of a mistletoe.

A cursory glance at the rest of the box's contents told him that this Christmas tree was going to look _nothing_ like the ones he was familiar with.

"You decorate your tree with these?" he fawned as Marinette left her parents behind the counter (where they were helping a late night customer) and appeared at his left shoulder.

"I know," Marinette groaned. "It's lame and _so_ embarrassing. My parents kept all the ornaments I ever made as a kid."

"Lame? _Lame?_ " Adrien dug through the box, smiling like an idiot. "This is the cutest thing I've _ever seen!_ " he exclaimed. He took a moment to explain about the Christmas tree in his house, and she pulled a look of absolute disgusted shock. "What? What's wrong?"

"You mean to tell me that you've _never_ decorated a tree before?"

Adrien dropped the ornament he was holding back into the box that was now resting on the table behind him, and moved a hand shyly to the back of his neck, feeling oddly exposed by the answer's implications. "Well…" He didn't feel like sugarcoating it, the way he normally would. Not with her. "No."

"Adrien…" A sad look of wistful longing washed over her face for a moment, before simmering back down into kindness and amusement, sending a little electric jolt through Adrien's chest nonetheless. The way Marinette wore her heart on her sleeve never ceased to thrill and amaze him. He was insanely jealous of that. "Care to place the first ornament, then?" She leaned past him to fish one out, then blushed as she looked down at it and saw which one she had blindly chosen.

Adrien accepted it before she could grow too flustered. The ornament was an old ceramic heart, imprinted with a single baby footprint and threaded at the top with a red ribbon.

He cleared his throat self-consciously and donned an overly serious expression, putting on a great big show of dramatically choosing a branch on which to hang his very first ornament. Finally he settled on one in the middle of the tree, directly between them. He adjusted it so the baby footprint faced out toward the bakery.

And then his playful charade collapsed.

Unable to stop himself, he ran his thumb over the footprint, amazed that someone so delicate and small could grow into someone as strong and beautiful as Marinette, and simultaneously giddy at finding himself privy to such an intimate detail of her life. It struck him that he was closer in this moment to Marinette than he might ever be to Ladybug. That unbidden thought threatened to unravel him, and he realized he'd been lingering on the moment perhaps a bit too long. He turned his gaze back to Marinette, releasing the ornament, but wasn't quite able to recapture the jokey nature of the exchange. All he managed was a shy, fond smile.

The girl in front of him returned the smile with abandon, positively glittering with joy.

 _Click. Flash_.

They both jumped to life, turning toward the sound of a camera shutter.

"Gotta document your first ever Christmas tree!" Tom explained, airing out the fresh polaroid that printed from his old-fashioned camera, then turned around to snap a picture of Sabine, who had climbed back onto the table in an attempt to even out Adrien's mediocre tinsel hanging skills.

An hour or so later the four of them sat with mugs of chamomile tea around the table nearest the decorated tree, chatting amiably in the glow of the string lights. Adrien focused on the heat of his tea, thunderstruck at how easily he fit in here with them, more so than with his own father, his own family. He wasn't even jealous; he just yearned for a slice of this happiness. Looking across the table where Marinette was squirming as her father told various stories relating to the year each ornament was made, he thought to himself that he needed to be damn careful or he was going to fall in love with this girl.

He slammed the rest of his tea, sidestepping the idea that he might already be past the point of no return.

When he thanked them and announced that he had to leave, Tom and Sabine made themselves suspiciously scarce. Marinette watched them disappear into the kitchen with red tinting her cheeks, then turned to Adrien and rolled her eyes. "I'll walk you out."

.

.

Out in the rising wind, Marinette wracked her brain for a casual way to end this casual evening. How did platonic friends usually say goodbye to one another? How did she usually say goodbye to Alya? She couldn't remember! Before she could work herself into a panic, Adrien did the work for her by throwing his arms around her shoulders, crushing her in a dense bear hug.

"Thank you so much, Marinette," he said into her hair. "Your family is so nice and friendly and I just… I needed this."

Marinette had to physically restrain herself from sighing like a lovelorn fool, and instead placed her hands lightly at his back, returning the hug. "Glad to have helped." _He said he was lonely,_ she remembered.

He let go of her then, leaning on that nervous tick of hisㅡone hand on the back of his neck as he smiled down at her uncertainly. It was such a different smile from the ones in his ads, the confident, suave ones. This one was imperfect and shy and real and the one she fell in love with in the first place.

"Adrien, I…" ( _love you_.) "Can we be friends?" she blurted instead. "I want to be friends." Adrien's face fell, and she knew what he must be thinking. "I know we're friends already," she answered, "but we've never been close and it's kinda my fault cause I was always intimidated by you because of, you know, because I kiiinda maybe had a little bit of a crush on you," she squeaked, in absolute disbelief that she was still talking. "But I'm past it," she lied. "I'm actually sort of dating someone now," she admitted, "and I'd really like to be better friends with you. If that's okay."

Adrien was dead. Totally dead. What could he say? Should he pretend he didn't know? Was there a social protocol for this kind of situation? "I'd love that," he managed, smothering the jealous twinge that arose as he considered Marinette's faceless boyfriend. He wasn't allowed to be jealous! He was sort of dating someone too! Or at least… trying to. Desperately trying.

She opened her mouth to reply, but it was lost in a distant loud crash. She sighed. "Akuma?"

Adrien nodded. "Akuma. Suppose I better hurry home so I don't get caught in the crossfire, huh?"

Marinette agreed vehemently. "Good idea. Bye, Adrien. See you at school tomorrow." She watched him hustle away down the street for a second, then rushed upstairs to transform, duly ignoring her parents' sneaky, omnipotent stares.

When she arrived on the scene, Chat Noir was already there, giving the akuma a run for its money across the rooftops. When she caught up to him, he greeted her with a dashing bow and a lilting, "Missed you, lovebug," before delving into work mode. "I think his roommate let his fish die?" Chat observed, pointing at the screaming hostage that the akuma had tucked under one arm, and then they both had to dodge a hostile wave of salt water.

"Careful, chaton, I hear cats don't like water."

"They don't," he shot back with a manic grin, "but they love catching fish," and he redoubled his offense with a flair that was excessive, even for him. Yet after a few unsuccessful tries, the akuma managed to sweep them away under a wave, and escaped before they had resurfaced, the water cascading off the rooftop onto the balconies below, drowning plants and melting the last leftover snow.

"Great," Adrien laughed, shaking the icy water from his hair. "Don't remember asking for a catbath."

Ladybug wrinkled her nose at him. "You're sure in a good mood," she noticed. "What's with you?"

Adrien looked up, surprised that Ladybug had noticed the shift between his usual show of good naturedness and the actual glee he was feeling after his night in the pleasant warmth of Marinette's bakery. "Oh, I uh…" Guilt leaked into his voice a little as he remembered his slightly impure feelings toward the girl. "I think I made a new friend tonight."

"That's funny," Ladybug replied, squeezing the water out of her own loose hair. "Me too." And before Adrien could whip out his baton to follow the akuma north, she tugged him off the edge of the roof, down onto the dark balcony below them, where she shoved him against the side of the apartment building and stood on her toes to kiss him.

His reaction was instant. He sighed, melting into her and threading both hands through her dripping hair, tilting her head back as his tongue made friends with her bottom lipㅡ

ㅡand was left hanging as she pulled away, a positively devilish look in her sapphire eyes. He blinked down at her, his vision clouded with desire. "So that's how it's gonna be, huh?"

Ladybug only whistled nonchalantly, leaping onto the railing as she prepared to zip away. "Come on, panthère, we've got a fish to fry." With that, she left him there.

The fish pun went so far over Adrien's head that he couldn't have caught it even with a fly fishing plane. He'd blown a fuse at the casually dropped nickname and hadn't heard anything that came after.

Panthère?

 _An upgrade?!_

.

.

The next morning Marinette lay awake in bed at 5:30am, far earlier than she ever normally awoke, staring at her phone. Specifically, staring at the latest post on the Ladyblog, which had been posted at 7:12pm the night before and had since garnered 550,000 likes; it was well on its way to blowing Alya's video interview with Ladybug out of the water as the blog's most famous post. Even as she watched the numbers were growing, as were the comments.

She scrolled up from the comments section (filled with Ladybug, Chat Noir, and Adrien fans alike) to look at the picture again. It really was a stunning photograph, even when she set aside her feelings for Adrien and Chat and her bias as Ladybug to look at it from a place of pure artistic critique. It looked like something from a calendar. In the portrait-oriented picture, the sky was tinged with deep purple and gold and pink above, reflecting like glitter on the famous statue of Ladybug and Chat Noir in the little white patches of snow that adorned it. But the photo did not revolve around the statue; rather, Alya had focused the lens on Adrien and Marinette, he sitting at the base of the statue looking up at her, and she standing in front of him looking down. Their bodies took up a relatively tiny amount of space in the picture, practically drowned by the enormity of the statue. And yet, their presence was demanding. Their stanceㅡand its incredibly subtle reflection of the statue above themㅡwas not lost on Marinette, nor any of the other thousands of commenters. In fact it was largely why the photo had garnered such wild attention in so short a time.

Marinette sighed, shoving down the painful feelings the photo had managed to dredge up out of the sewers of her soul. She really thought she'd made progress last night. A decision. But she knew now that this was going to be extremely, exceedingly hard on her.

A quiet knock tore her from her thoughts.

"Marinette?" Tom whispered, peeking inside. "Are you awake yet?"

She shoved her phone under her pillow, sitting up. "Morning Papa. Oh, waffles!" A grin split her face in half as Tom finished climbing into her room with a big fat plate of fresh cooked waffles. "Breakfast in bed? What's the occasion?" she teased. "Did I do something to warrant this?"

Her dad only beamed, settling next to his daughter on the bed. "I wanted to show you the picture from last night," he said, reaching into his apron pocket.

"Picture?" she squeaked. Man, that traveled fast. How had he already seen it? But her mind went blank as he handed her the polaroid he'd taken the night before. _Oh,_ she realized. _That picture._

Looking at it, she flushed like mad. This one was even worse than the one Alya had taken. The christmas tree rose in the middle of the photo, up out of sight, and on both sides Adrien and Marinette looked warmly into each other's eyes, the glow of the christmas lights reflecting deep within. The single ceramic heart hung between them with a keen sort of purpose to it. No wonder her dad had taken a picture. It was such a "polaroid moment" it was almost sickening.

"He's dreamy," Tom said, leaning over the photograph with her.

Marinette snatched it out of his sight. "Papa!"

"Just saying," Tom observed. "This would make for a nice Christmas card, don't you think?"

" _Papa!"_

"Enjoy your waffles, Marinette!"

But as her dad left, Marinette set her waffles aside for Tikki to pick at, then trudged across her room toward the corkboard above her desk. She'd long since taken down the pictures of Adrien, almost a year ago now. So maybe it was taking a step backwards when she pulled a thumbtack and placed her dad's polaroid there in the center, surrounded by a dozen pictures of herself and Alya. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. She didn't know if she was moving backwards or forwards or if she was careening toward some unknowable, imminent disaster.

Wherever she was going, at least she was moving. She was so tired of standing still.

* * *

.

.

 _Heard joke once: Man goes to doctor. Says he's depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain._

 _Doctor says, "Treatment is simple. Great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him. That should pick you up."_

 _Man bursts into tears. Says, "But doctor...I am Pagliacci."_

ㅡ **Alan Moore,** author of _Watchmen_


End file.
